1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a network connection establishing method, more particularly to a wired network connection establishing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, 1000Base-T and 10GBase-T Ethernet standards specify use of a network cable including four twisted pair cables and capable of supporting high-performance, full-duplex data transmission between network devices within 100 meters. If the network devices at ends of the network cable (namely, a master network device 1, such as a switch, and a slave network device 2, such as a network interface card (NIC)) comply with the 1000Base-T Ethernet standard specifications, then a data transmission rate of each of the four twisted pair cables in the network cable is 250 Mbps, and the data transmission rate of the four twisted pair cables together is accordingly 1000 Mbps (that is, 1 Gbps). If the master network device 1 and the slave network device 2 comply with the 10GBase-T Ethernet standard specifications, then the data transmission rate of each of the four twisted pair cables in the network cable is 2.5 Gbps, and the data transmission rate of the four twisted pair cables together is accordingly 10 Gbps. Notably, 1000Base-T and 10GBase-T Ethernet standard specifications require use of all four of the twisted pair cables in the network cable for data transmission. Therefore, if one or two of the four twisted pair cables is broken, it is possible that a network connection cannot be established.
The conventional network cable includes four of the twisted pair cables. However, since a network device operating under the 10Base-T or 100Base-T Ethernet network standards only needs first and second ones of the twisted pair cables in the network cable, some vendors provide a type of network cable that includes four connector ends but only two of the twisted pair cables. Often, users are unaware that the network cable they are using includes only two of the twisted pair cables.
Consequently, when a network device supporting the 1000Base-T standard or the 10Gbase-T Ethernet standard establishes a connection with another network device supporting the 1000Base-T or 10GBase-T standard through the network cable that includes only two of the twisted pair cables, the connection can only support data transmission rates associated with Ethernet standards specifying use of two of the twisted pair cables, that is, data transmission rates of 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps, and cannot support the data transmission rates of 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps associated with the 1000Base-T and 10GBase-T Ethernet standards, which require use of all four of the twisted pair cables in the network cable for data transmission. Thus, the data transmission rate of a connection between two network devices can be restricted due to the number or condition of the twisted pair cables in the network cable, despite connection capacities of the network devices themselves supporting higher data transmission rates of 1 G or 10 G.